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ext_27009 ([identity profile] libgirl.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] otw_news2007-05-31 11:17 pm
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A Question....

Has there been any consideration about age restrictions at the suggested archive?

As a long-time, multi-fandom participant and talking with another one this week over the issue at LJ and with fanlib, two things came up:

1. As long as we're paying someone else to host our things, they can decide not to host specific things. Also, people will attempt to make a profit off of us in any way possible. The best solution is to host our own site with a dedicated server than can house us all.

2. We were talking and we both agreed that if there was a multi-fandom fanfiction hub, we wouldn't want it to be along the lines of ff.net. Everyone I know cringes when a news source goes to ff.net to talk about the "fandom phenomenon". That said, admitting fic.'s based on quality is tricky and subjective. If we create something, for ourselves, then I hope that we would both cover ourselves legally and present ourselves professionally. There is a legal issue involving minors and NC-17 material than can only really be remedied by not allowing minors. The easiest solution seems to be creating a panfandom archive for underage readers either in association with or as part of the larger archive, requiring a age statement to sign up and logged-in-only access to adult material. Also, if there are no underage readers allowed, then there is less likelihood of creating another ff.net.

I know that this will probably not be a popular opinion. I know that many people in fandom, particularly on LJ are underage and "passing" or "socking" in order to read adult material. I'm not saying that some underage readers cannot handle adult material or aren't already participating in adult activities; however, from a legal standpoint, it seems more responsible to take precautions.

Additionally, in light of the recent LJ events, it's obvious that much of what gets archives, websites, journals and fic.'s shut down is a perceived danger to the "childrenz". If this is a site by adults, for adults it's less likely to come under that sort of negative fire. After all, we're going to have to deal with the legal ramifications of intellectual property and copyright laws already.

I'm truly not trying to rock the boat or ignore the many and important contributions of underage fans to fandom. I'm just trying to ascertain how the issues of liability will be dealt with.

[identity profile] celtic-tigress.livejournal.com 2007-06-02 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
There are no archive sites associated w/ FA that host adult HP fic, but there are several non-affiliated ones that do host NC-17 fic. restrictedsection.org (all ships), checkmated.com (Ron/Hermione only) are a couple I can think of off the top of my head, and Sycophant Hex (can't remember the url, but it's the first thing that pops up on a google search) has branches that host different genres/ships of fic. I wouldn't recommend any of those as paradigms, since they all require registration to see teh pr0nz, but as a guide on how not to do things, or to see their categorization schemes, let me know and I'll let you borrow my passwords.

[identity profile] bluevsgrey.livejournal.com 2007-06-03 03:53 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, yes. Restricted section was what I was thinking of. Beyond the registration aspect, is their anything else that makes them less than perfect?

[identity profile] celtic-tigress.livejournal.com 2007-06-04 06:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, they put up a warning page before every fic, as well as before every chapter and clicking through those can get tedious, especially when the chapters are short. Also, after you sign in the cookie that allows access to the fics runs out within a couple of hours, and you have to re-sign in frequently. That is frustrating as well. There is no way to view other comments made on a story the way FA and LJ have either (I think).

On the plus side, their search function works well, and you can search by pairing (even when pairing includes more than two characters), and they offer a bookmarking and alert system for registered members that lets you know when an author you've added to a favorite list has updated.

[identity profile] bluevsgrey.livejournal.com 2007-06-04 09:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah yes that would get very tedious.

Searchability is something that can get very frustrating, very fast if it isn't good. It is an issue that I think is even a bigger deal than age restriction, or whatever were calling this.

[identity profile] celtic-tigress.livejournal.com 2007-06-05 01:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I totally get you with the search thing. Wraithbait, for example, has the worst search function I've ever experienced. I believe I have suffered a stroke just from using that site alone.

[identity profile] bluevsgrey.livejournal.com 2007-06-05 03:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah for some reason I never really liked Wraithbait, it didn't seem very usable. It has a pretty background/skin though.